The Seven Scions

Can the scions overcome their destiny and defeat The Black Hand?

The party finds help in an unexpected place.

The travelers left the dessert behind as they entered the mountains, eventually finding themselves in a swamp. They pressed forward until they found a clearing containing a large circle carved with runes similar to those in the room with so many portals. Consulting the black book, Gemi was able to decipher a few of them and the group decided this was yet another portal—one they certainly needed in order to chase The Black Hand to their origins.

As they inspected the portal, a group of Lizard Men approached. Communication was difficult at first, but the party soon understood that the Lizard Men had destroyed the portal to stop the Black Hand (who they called “bads”) from coming into their home. They reluctantly agreed to fix it if the party would help them defeat a large serpent that had been terrorizing the area. Once the monster was defeated and the portal open, they also agreed to watch over Buttercup until Cillian came back to get her.

[someone should write about that side adventure that BB, Cillian, and Bastion had at this point]

Gemi and Bastion chose the two runes they thought would take the group to the Hand’s fortress and they once more set off into the unknown.

They arrived in a fortress of some kind and battled their way through it until they finally interrupted some kind of sacrificial ritual and discovered Jaryn on the altar. His face was nearly gone, replaced with a swirling maw of chaos, but before they reached him Cillian, Bastion, Gemi, and Meriele fell through a trap in the floor and had to fight their way back to their companions.

They roasted a dire boar in a pit of fire, much to his master’s dismay, fought off a necromancer and her minions, and dealt with a dwarf who had apparently been hired by the Black Hand to work in their dungeons, sending him back to his people. Eventually they made their way back upstairs to their friends and Jaryn.

What will they find in the stronghold of the enemy?

Armed with what little information the Sons could give them, the group set off westward to look for the entrance to the Black March. They traveled across the harsh dessert for seven days, hearing the same story in every town: Jaryn and his party had been seen heading Northwest several months ago. Finally they came across a lone house with an old man in the dooryard calling to them. He invited them into his home to warn them and tell them to go back when the house was abruptly attacked by the Black Hand.

In the process of fighting off the attackers, the party burned down the man’s house, made friends with a horse, and found out the town was a stop on the Black Hand’s supply chain. What was left of the man’s home contained crates of weapons and war supplies. The travelers convinced the townspeople, who had arrived after the fight, to take up the arms themselves and stand up to the Hand. Then they continued into the wilderness, still searching for the missing paladin.

The Sons of Pelor had warned the party they would have only seven days until the Black Hand managed to resurect their dark god, and as they climbed into the foothills, they saw heard and saw the signs that they would be too late. Seven days had already passed. Yet still they struggled on, determined to find out more about the dark cult and the events that had drawn them together.

As they drew near to another ruined temple, a man matching Jaryn’s description appeared out of the trees to greet them. It soon became apparent, however, that he was not the real Jaryn and further that he had several dopplegangers. After fending off the attack, the party inspected the area and decided it was the entrance to the Black March. They had found it at last.

Shortly afterward, Regulus put in a brief appearance, only to disappear a moment later as the chaos reclaimed him. In his place, was a large bearish looking man who introduced himself as Blood Bear. He too bore the mark of the Black Hand on his neck and was outraged by the unnatural things he’d observed near his homeland recently. He’d somehow met Regulus and agreed to join the party, who were glad to have his aid in battle. Dreugan left the party briefly as they prepared to enter the March, answering a call for aid from the Sons of Pelor who needed his expertise for a battle closer to town. Thus changed, the party entered the Black March and prepared to meet their foe.

The party at long last finds a town, but something is wrong.

After battling their way deeper into the fortress and solving a puzzle, the party managed to activate another portal. Not knowing where it might lead, they still went through, eager to be anywhere else and to advance their campaign of revenge. To their surprise, they ended up in an abandoned and destroyed temple on the outskirts of a town. Regulus left to visit the Elemental Chaos in search of more answers, little knowing he would travel with the party no more.

After battling their way out of the temple, past a gelatinous cube and into the fresh air, it became more obvious that someone had been here before them, ravaging the temple and building what looked like an army encampment nearby. Godwin found a very nice set of plate armour with a strange and ominous insignia of a black hand and decided to exchange it for his old mail; Bastion picked up a mace topped with the black hand symbol, which he also decided to keep. Then they made their way down the hill toward the town, wondering what they would find there and what sort of army belonged to the black hand.

They found a small town at a crossroads teeming with activity and all but taken over by what turned out to be a refugee camp. People were fleeing East from the nearby dessert and the mountains beyond it, but no one would say from what. The adventurers loaded up with new supplies and better weapons and then headed to the inn only to find that there were no rooms available, though some would miraculously open up for them later.

Back in the camp, the companions stepped in to stop an attack against the refugees, killing several soldiers in familiar black hand armour. That’s when the Sons of Pelor finally stepped forward to explain the situation: The Black Hand was a military organisation that had been raiding the villages and settlements to the West, moving ever closer to Arrakis. The Sons had set themselves against the Hand and about a year ago sent one of their paladins into the wilderness to search for the Black March. He disappeared a few months later and they wanted the party to go and look for him. Sensing that it would aid their quest, the companions agreed to look for Jaryn.

Death draws the party closer together.

Having recovered the orb, the travelers activated the portal and let fate take them where it would. They ended up in a large room with dozens of similar portals, some of which were active and some which were not. It appeared to be the hub of whatever organization they had crossed. They also found a large gold door which would only open with an oddly shaped key, a platinum door which led to a trapped corridor, and a bone door which also had no locking mechanism. Meriele picked the lock on the platinum door and spotted the trap, which she was then able to disarm, revealing a room at the end of the corridor filled with spinning blades. The party defeated the blades and discovered a chest an a glass box containing and odd book.

With the book in hand, they destroyed the bone door to discover three sleeping drow. Something told them not to wake the sleepers, nor to kill them, but it didn’t stop Meriele from stealing their circlets and belts for her companions to wear. From there, they passed into a smaller room where the battle proved to be just too much for Keldryn. The noble warlord fell when two gnome casters ambushed the party before they had time to heal. His companions made short work of the gnomes and then lay their fallen brother across their small beds before taking the time to rest and heal themselves. Cillian marked each of them with his own blood, bonding them together with a tribal ritual from his people and the others all reaffirmed their committment to each other and to destroying whoever had started this.

When they left the sleepers’ room and emerged once more into the room of portals, the party was surprised to discover a lone dwarf coming through another portal. He also had the strange brand on his neck and so agreed to join up with the others in an effort to solve the mystery and hopefully find his way out of the maze of fortresses. He had just lost his party in a battle, but claimed to have training and experience on the battlefield, so they let him help with tactics in the next fight.

After finding nothing but dead ends and the gold door, the party was forced to climb through a glass trapdoor into the floor above, where they were greeted by enormous crocodiles. During the ensuing struggle, Cillian nearly drowned, but emerged victorious and began his now famous tooth collection. With the lizards behind them, the party next defeated a mage and took an oddly shaped key from his corpse. Luckily, it was the key to the gold door, which granted them access to the rest of the fortress.

How is the fortress flying and where is it taking them?

The party bought what gear they could and set off back toward the fortress with a few villagers. There was a hobgoblin camp they would have to clean out before approaching the fortress proper, so they lay in a stock of oil and formed a daring plan. Prisoners were being brought to the fortress in covered wagons, one of which they would steal, light on fire, and push through the gate into the camp to keep their enemies busy.

Once the battle began, they were stunned to see one of the hobgoblins grow to several times his normal size, but, never one to pass up a challenge, Cillian quaffed a potion and himself grew into a giant to take on the goblin leader. Later, he smashed a wagon into small pieces and single-handedly killed two of its occupants, earning the new name Cillian Wagonsbane.

As the fight neared its end, the ground began to shake and a large crack appeard between the fortress and the camp. The group had only a moment to decide as the huge fortress rose into the air. They ran and jumped onto the foundations, grabbing whatever roots and rocks they could for purchase, leaving behind the only surviving villager, a young girl named Buttercup. She stayed close to Regulus during the fight and now ran home to tell her people what had passed.

The fortress continued to rise higher into the sky as the adventurers made their way to an opening into the dungeon, where they found a safe place to rest. During their exploration of the dungeon, the party found what looked like an abattoir, and then the room where the trash was dumped. Something was definitly alive down there, but no one noticed until Gemi and Cillian had gone for a swim in the muck in an attempt to recover a glowing object. They returned with a gem and a few rot grubs, but later found out it was all for nothing. After a fight with a bronze gollem, they found a portal but realized they didn’t have the orb to activate it. It was time to go back to the rubbish and search once more for the glowing object, only this time Meriele suggested that Gemi use his Mage Hand ability to find it and no one had to fight off the grubs again.

On the way to the trash pit, they were forced to hide from a large group of hobgoblins marching past and then took the opportunity to peer out of the tunnel opening. They discovered that they were floating hundreds of feet in the air above a city that none of them knew. The landscape they could see made them think they had traveled nearly a thousand miles since leaving the mountain and the hobgoblin camp. They also saw several other fortresses flying near theirs and began to understand that whatever was happening was much bigger than they originally suspected.

Why were these seven chosen to bear the mark of their captor?

With a mix of combat and stealth, the party managed to make their way out of the prision. On their way out through the sewers, they discovered the horrible secret of the fortress: a mind flayer who put his victims through a grinder when he was finished with them. The party was forced to crawl through these liquid remains on their way out of the fortress and then found that the nearby river was defiled and spreading disease as it flowed past the fortress and down the mountain.

They followed the water for several hours until they encountered a funeral where the mourners looked to be on death’s doorstep themselves. Waiting respectfully until the rites were finished, the cleric made himself known and spoke to the attendent priests. He found out that a blood poision was spreading through the nearby villages because of the filth in the river that was seeping into the land. He also found out that these men had recently brought a new and very strict faith to the small farming village. Suspicious of these men and their purpose, the travelers befriended one of the mourners. He told them that some of the villagers were still going to hold the annual festival despite the priests’ ban and invited the party to join them.

At the festival, Regulus proved his skill at telling tall tales, while Keldryn outlasted a local farmboy in a feat of strength and Meriele tossed more rocks into a bucket strapped to the back of a swine than another farmer, Bastion successfully found a rat hidden in the darkest depths of the barn and Cillian proved his great strength by smashing a boulder into dust. It was an enjoyable night for everyone involved and the villagers agreed to help the party in their crusade against the mind flayer in the mountaintop fortress.

A blog for your campaign

While the wiki is great for organizing your campaign world, it’s not the best way to chronicle your adventures. For that purpose, you need a blog!

The Adventure Log will allow you to chronologically order the happenings of your campaign. It serves as the record of what has passed. After each gaming session, come to the Adventure Log and write up what happened. In time, it will grow into a great story!

Best of all, each Adventure Log post is also a wiki page! You can link back and forth with your wiki, characters, and so forth as you wish.

One final tip: Before you jump in and try to write up the entire history for your campaign, take a deep breath. Rather than spending days writing and getting exhausted, I would suggest writing a quick “Story So Far” with only a summary. Then, get back to gaming! Grow your Adventure Log over time, rather than all at once.